In the sitting room, Jaime has kept the colour palette to neutral greys and browns with white detailing. The double aspect windows take centre stage, with beautiful views out over the Bayham gardens

Off the Scale

With soaring ceilings, contemporary décor and the most beautiful views across the Kentish countryside, Bayham Hall’s restoration has allowed the building’s original features to shine through whilst providing an enviably spacious family home for owners Jaime and Justin Cooke. 

A real fire was top of Rafe’s list for establishing that basic sense of contentment and family wellbeing. They chose The Fireplace Company in Crowborough to supply and fit all the fireplaces and wood burning stoves.

Green and Pleasant

Childhood memories and favourite holiday haunts are the inspiration behind Karen and Rafe Easter’s charming family home. It’s difficult to believe just how much of England’s green and pleasant land lies a mere hour’s train journey from the capital, and...

The working part of the kitchen is confined to one wall with cupboards painted a dusty pink, some with a geometric pattern in copper. The worktop is poured concrete and the wall lights are from eBay

Too Cool for School

The colourful history behind Juliet Maingay-Cooper and Jake Mintrim’s Hastings home, part of a mansion built by eminent Victorian travel writer Augustus Hare, saw it once serve as a convent and school before its current incarnation as a chic and...

The double-height dining room retains all the atmosphere of the original building, with a candle chandelier suspended over a huge old table

Open House

Interior architect Susie Pfeiffer has breathed contemporary life into an old farm building, whilst celebrating its original features, in her incredible barn conversion. After many happy years in a barn they had converted into a family home, interior architect Susie...

Artwork features prominently on the walls of the staircase

Hidden beauty

Just a stone’s throw from the heart of Tunbridge Wells, a sensitively renovated  Georgian townhouse has become a downsizing couple’s secluded sanctuary. This elegant Georgian townhouse has to be approached on foot, because it is tucked down a narrow leafy...

Amy limewashed the original bricks in the living area to make them look consistently aged. A black steel multiple-paned window looks through to the bedroom – which Amy wanted specifically to create that loft feeling

The Outbuilding

Journalist Amy Maynard’s effortlessly chic converted outbuilding is the result of her ‘warehousey, not twee’ vision for a holiday rental that is a home away from home. The Danes call it hygge – meaning the feeling of contentment that comes...

Pattern Repeat

Just along the coast from Margate, with views out over Westgate-on-Sea’s sandy seafront, Hamilton Lodge was chosen by its current owners as the perfect foil to the bustle of London, making it the ideal weekend retreat. Everything you’ve ever read...

The walls in the drawing room are painted in Bone by Farrow & Ball

Make History

Part of the Leeds Castle estate, Battel Hall has been given a makeover by interior designer Francesca Rowan-Plowden in keeping with its 14th century origins – and its 1930s party heyday. Anyone with a penchant for the roaring Twenties is...

Previous pages & above: In order to create a better and more open space for socialising Clare knocked down the walls of the old entrance hall and sitting room, and connected the conservatory with the old kitchen

Light and Space

When a seaside house long-coveted by art director Clare Clarkson came onto the market, she jumped at the chance to rework its interior to create an open-plan home, perfect for her large extended family.

The 18th century kitchen table is a baker’s dough bin

A cocktail of grandeur

Will and Nick live in a one-bedroom flat, decorated in glorious palatial style (and have great parties…)

The sofa in the sitting room is covered in Molly’s award-winning Luna fabric

Print perfect

Textile designer Molly Mahon and her husband Rollo have created a family home and thriving business in a cottage in the Ashdown Forest.

Holidays in Sussex

:: SPONSORED CONTENT :: Welcome to one of northern Europe’s best surviving Medieval landscapes.

Exciting year ahead as buyers recognise Church View’s unique charm

:: SPONSORED CONTENT :: This year looks set to be another fantastic one at Church View, Dandara’s beautiful development in the heart of Tenterden, Kent.

The sofa in the sitting room was made by the workshop at Ensor Interior Design

House and garden

With a skilled eye for uniting inside with out, interior designer Lisa Evans has made a High Weald cottage into a sophisticated home.

Julia bought the doll's house in an antique shop and painted it in Farrow & Ball Railings

Material World

Mix a touch of medieval with a helping of Georgian – and throw in some thoroughly modern touches. The result? A unique family home perfect for 21st century living. Tucked away in a pretty Kentish village, The Den has been...

The sofas are reissues of a 1960s Robin Day design. The painting of a girl was bought from a student at Brighton Art College and the red abstract is French

Elegant imperfection

A textile conservator and an antique dealer combined to create a home where patina is prized. There is cold – as in chilly – and then there is cool. The Tunbridge Wells home of textile conservator Charlotte Casadéjus is definitely...

The main living area

Stairway to heaven

A gloomy 1930s chapel has been brilliantly converted into a light-drenched modern townhouse. Back in 2011, when Ian and Lisa decided to make the move from Tunbridge Wells to Hastings, they had an offer accepted on an old pub which...

Paul and his builder installed the claw-foot bath

Gothic glamour

Cinematic, dramatic, palatial… it’s hard to know where to start describing the bold interior style of this historic building and family home, inspired by the films of Jean Cocteau – and Hammer horrors. It was Valentine’s Day when fashion designer,...

The disco ball is from Taylor Jayne in Reigate

Personal space

A converted malthouse, with soaring ceilings, provides ample growing room for Rachel Ford and her family. Destiny, chance, karma or plain old coincidence… it’s interesting how some things in life just happen to fall mysteriously into place at just the...

The beach hut is decorated in the same pink and blue colour scheme as Annemarie’s house, with more wallpaper samples

Bold and beautiful

With a background in set designing, event styling and painter-decorating, Annemarie St Vincent Farr has transformed a Victorian terrace into something extraordinary

Looking from the kitchen back to the living area. The slate grey walls have been created using a material imported from America, called Ardex

Cool yule

Loma Beach House sits at the end of a sandy lane, its smart, but coastal, black-clad facade hinting, or rather, broadcasting, that something has fundamentally changed inside this 1950s house.

Evernden Interiors sourced the antique kitchen table. The kitchen is by Plain English

Home on the farm

A beautiful Grade II listed farmhouse has been expertly nurtured into a perfect balance of cosiness and sophistication

The wallpaper in the drawing room is by De Gournay. The rocking horse is from Stevenson Brothers

Picture perfect

A fantasy family home has been loved back to life

Dominating the area by the window is a large sofa/day bed covered with pastel throws and richly ornate deep red and gold velvet cushions

The mother of reinvention

Artist Sassy Luke lives among her art – and makes art out of her life

The table top is a sheet of MDF painted with white emulsion

A Passage from India

A bona fide legend of British interior design, Sasha Waddell has embarked on a charitable project designing beautiful textiles which will benefit impoverished children in Delhi – and are used to glorious effect throughout her own home. As soon as...

The East Room is in a constant state of flux. The deck chair frames on the wall are from a past production

The House of Many Words

As Hastings launches its very first literary festival, we visit the extraordinary home of a theatrical collective where the house itself is an inspiration and performance space. Some of the most celebrated houses in the world have become such, not just...

The dining room viewed from the other end, showing the second Isabel Bannerman photograph over 12 figures of Chinese astrology signs from Clignancourt fleamarket in Paris. The metal console tables were commissioned from Tom Faulkner, furniture designer. The red velvet curtain fabric is by Timorous Beasties. The collections of glass on the trolley and objects on the mantelpiece are arranged by Jane.

God’s acre

A rambling old rectory is reborn as a vibrant showcase for years of collecting

The terraced garden at the front of the house. The previous owner had created the garden from scratch and Melanie has enhanced and edited it, adding her own touches, including a seating area made out of metal gabion baskets filled with pebbles

House of scarves

Textile designer and pattern maker, Melanie Laslett, has transformed a 19th century fisherman’s cottage in Hastings into a light and airy home peppered with mid-century modern finds

Park Life

A stunning Georgian townhouse, next to a royal palace, combines modern flair with sublime elegance

A Slice of Heaven

She has a shop called In House Junkie – and we’re finding Samantha Bruce’s Tunbridge Wells house very hard to resist

The double-height entrance hall, where Sara and her husband decided to keep one wall of the original oak panelling. The large landscape painting of Villa D’Este is by local artist and friend Alexander Cresswell

Interiors notes from a stylist

Blogger and micro influencer Sara Delaney of Notes from a Stylist shares home-styling tips from her cleverly updated Victorian house in a dream location in the Surrey Hills

The main living space is in what was originally the ballroom of the house. The paintings are by house owner Ed Williams, inspired by the Soviet-era artworks in the nearby Baker Mamonova Gallery

The rebirth of cool

A St Leonards-on-Sea seafront mansion is brought back to dazzling life

Ally commissioned bespoke bookshelves to create a focal point in the sitting room. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball’s Varta, to add a splash of bold colour.

Family favours

A lovely family home which had got a bit lived in, was brought back to peak condition by interior designer Alexis Wylie

The dining table is medieval. It was given to Marta’s father, an architect by a client in lieu of fees. Marta deliberately exposed the brickwork around the fireplace to reveal the building’s fabric. The mirror is from McCully & Crane in Rye

Coastal haven

This old coastguard’s cottage is gloriously free of all those corny seaside decor clichés thanks to interior architect Marta Nowicka’s sophisticated vision

Looking from the sitting area through to the eat-in kitchen, shows the beautiful flow of the space. The antlers are vintage and they found the 1970s lamp in Hastings. The sofas are IKEA cleverly disguised under antique French linen sheets (Pale & Interesting always have a stock of antique linen) and the cushions are also from their shop

New England Style Beach House

Converting a tired old weatherboard cabin into a spacious coastal retreat, Atlanta Bartlett and Dave Coote were sure of one thing - that it would end up pale and interesting...

Sarah’s bedroom is a veritable boudoir. She had the curtains made in fabric from Wayward in St Leonards. She found the bed cover in Debenhams and the wallpaper is by Italian firm Dochi. The gold and crystal mirror was from TK Maxx, Tunbridge Wells. The 1950s dressing table was from an antiques shop in Eastbourne

Hollywood Glamour

This Hastings house is a glorious tribute to high fashion, Hollywood’s golden era and – of course – Mr Elvis Presley (thank you very much...)

Next to the kitchen is a cosy room known as ‘the snug’. Initially a very light grey, and devoid of much natural light, Caroline has worked with the darkness, choosing deep tones and adding little pops of colour

Dream Family Home

Through the invaluable help of a property finder, media guru Caroline Kyriazis tracked down a spacious Victorian terrace in Tunbridge Wells with all the period qualities she and her husband had been searching for

The bright pink sofa came from the Yard in the Old Town

Kaleidoscope of Colour

Central Saint Martins graduate Amy Exton’s terraced Margate home is a riot of clashing pattern, vivid paint and leopard print in many guises – a love of which she lavishly pours into her work as a set designer

The Bulthaup kitchen is deceptively large for a one bedroomed apartment. “We had enough kitchen to go into a medium sized house, but it fits beautifully in this space,” says Mike

Savoir-flair

Making the decision to move back to England, Mike and Caroline were on the lookout for a lock-up-and-leave apartment that would work with their busy travelling lifestyle. After discovering a 1990s conversion of battery factory into living spaces, the couple...

Let There Be Light

Location was key when Tanya and Richard Johnson moved back to the UK from Dubai. The Surrey Hills barn conversion that they set their sights on was devoid of natural light and filled with stripped pine until the couple brought...

Comfort and Joy

Kali Hamerton-Stove’s beautiful family oast house, tucked into countryside on the outskirts of a pretty Kentish village, is a haven of Christmas cheer. Following an ethos that her home should be filled with purposeful, quality items that are built to...

The House on the Hill

Undertaking a mammoth restoration project, designer Shaun Clarkson, along with his partner Paul Brewster, have applied their unique and exciting approach to interiors to a six storey Regency town house in the heart of Hastings Old Town.

“I need greenery and we don’t really have a garden, so I have brought it inside. A lot of the plants are from Mao Bramall at Shimizu, the florist’s further along the high street.

Home to Shop

Craving a dramatic change from the stresses of London life, David Page and his partner, David Baker, chose to set up home – and shop – in Hastings Old Town. And they couldn’t be happier that they did...

The award-winning Mushroom House at the bottom of Ben Swanborough’s garden is built to the design of his daughter, Elsie

Award-Winning Mushroom House

When Ben Swanborough’s daughter Elsie designed her dream den, and saved £500 to build it, he set to work bringing it to life. Nestled above a river at the bottom of the family garden, Elsie’s Mushroom House beat off competition...

This half of the drawing room, now resplendent with a grand piano – the house’s co-owner, Stephen Groves, is a pianist and church organist – was their kitchen

St Benedicts Victorian B&B

Over time, Paul Oxborrow and Stephen Groves have succeeded in buying each floor of a grand nineteenth century St. Leonards house. Staying true to the period of its construction, Paul and Stephen have completely refurbished its four floors and now run several rooms...

The studio, at the end of the house, offers the perfect space for Dave to create his rural and village street scenes and Sue her portraits and life drawings

Artists’ Model Home

Sue and Dave Donkin’s converted farm building, tucked away down an idyllic Kentish country lane, offers the perfect space for the couple to pursue their artistic interests

The wilder side of John and Anna’s creativity comes out in their choice of artworks, with large scale original paintings – and some quirky eBay finds – in every room, mixed in with some very special photographs

Creatives’ Rye Home

Backing straight onto the River Rother with uninterrupted views across the salt marshes, the unique collection of buildings that creative director and film-maker John Carver and branding and personal curator Anna Carloss call home are testament to the couple’s creative...